The End of the Story Read Free

not. Or a man would come toward me from a distance with his arrogant, tense bearing. Or, close by, in a crowded subway car, I would see the same pale blue eyes, pink skin with freckles, or high, prominent cheekbones. Once, the features were his but exaggerated, so that the head was like a rubber mask: hair the same color but thicker, eyes so light they were almost white, forehead and cheekbones jutting out grotesquely, red flesh hanging from the bones, lips pressed together as though in a rage, body absurdly wide. Another time, the version of his face was so lacking in definition, so smooth and open, that I easily saw how, in time, it would develop into that other face I had loved so much.
    I saw his clothes on many people: of good but coarse material, often threadbare or faded, always clean. And I couldn’t help believing, though I knew it made no sense, that if enough men were to wear these clothes in the same place, he would be forced to appear by a sort of magnetism. Or I imagined that one day I would see a man wearing exactly what he wore, a red plaid lumber jacket, or a light blue flannel shirt, and white painter’s pants, or blue jeans torn at the cuffs, and this man would also have straight reddish-gold hair combed to one side of his broad forehead, blue eyes, prominent cheekbones, tight lips, a broad strong body, a manner that was both shy and arrogant, and the resemblance would be complete, down to the last detail, the pink in the whites of his eyes, or the freckles on his lips, or the chip in his front tooth, as though all his elements had come together and the only thing needed, to change this man into him, was the right word.
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    Although I remember it was on a sunny late afternoon in October, on the top floor of a tall public building, I can’t remember the reason for the reception. Surrounded by other people, in a sort of atrium, either circular or octagonal and flooded with sunlight, with doorways opening out from it, I was taken up to him by Mitchell, who told me his name. I forgot his name immediately, as I almost always did when I was introduced to someone. He already knew who I was, so he didn’t forget my name. Mitchell went away, leaving us alone. We stood there in the midst of women moving slowly and tentatively through the rooms singly and in pairs, in and out of the strong sunlight. He told me he had imagined I would be older. I was surprised that he had imagined anything. I was surprised by several things: his frankness, the way he was dressed, in what seemed to me a hiking outfit, and, more than that, the fact that he existed at all, standing here talking to me, since no one had mentioned him to me before. I did not think about him after I left the place, maybe because he was so young.
    Later that day, I went up to a shabby café on the coast road to the north of my town where he and a few friends, along with other people I didn’t know, had come to watch a performance of some kind that included primitive tribal chants. When I came in, the room was already darkened except for the spotlights on the stage. The only empty chair I could see at the long table was the one next to him, though a piece of clothing and maybe a purse were hanging from the back of it. When he saw me hesitate over the empty chair, he stood up and removed these things, taking them down to the other end of the table. In fact, another woman came to the chair soon after the performance began, in the dim light, and with irritation walked away to another seat. I don’t know who this woman was.
    He was sitting at one end of the table, looking down the length of it, his back to the door I had come in by, and I was sitting to his left, facing a small stage where two men were performing, one chanting and singing, the other plucking a bass fiddle. Across from me was Ellie. I didn’t know her very well then. He kept leaning over to her during the performance, which was so noisy and